I will admit that when we started doing devotions as a "leadership" group a couple years ago, that I was not sure how it was really going to go.

Two years in...and the sharing that goes on in those times has been extremely beneficial. Not to mention getting to know everyone better, and get to share more of who we are, a deeper getting to know struggles, praises, and being able to just relate better.

Darwin cannot be there at 8:00 on Fridays this year, and Oscar was out of town this Friday, but we carried on between Maria, myself and Valerie giving the devotion. It was about healing, as she has been listening to some sermons online from a former pastor of ours about the subject.

We listened, we talked, we wrestled. It is a difficult topic really, especially if you deal with a lot of people with illness. Looking at healing that Jesus did and in the Bible...it is a hard-to-deal-with mix of some being healed, some not, God moving, God calling us to prayer...it leaves you possibly with a bit of a paradox, or at least a conundrum.

We arrived at something I thought was most helpful. That in our prayer life in general, as well as when praying for healing, sometimes we miss the point. We can focus on what we are asking for, and what that means for the person or people hearing the prayer...and allow many questions of doubt and whether or not we are praying correctly get in the way.

Instead...we should remember that all prayer is ultimately about getting us closer to God and what He is doing and will do. It isn't about us or how we phrase things. We are free to come to God in our confusion, our anger, in our lack of seeing the bigger picture, knowing that what He will do is so much bigger than what we can see or imagine. And if that point was not clear enough in my mind, I ran across a picture from the cancer ward in Hospital Escuela from a few years ago that showed a Bible verse. Specifically Jeremiah 33:3...

"Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."